Finger motion-activated Granular Synthesizer

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This is a 5 grain granular synthesizer built in Max/MSP and uses gestural input through the Leap Motion. Horizontal motion scrubs the sample and Vertical motion determines the grain length. Each individual grain is triggered by motion of each individual finger. In typical granular synthesizers, the rate at which each grain is triggered is usually determined by some periodic function. Using finger motion allows interesting textures to be created that are difficult to produce under conventional granular techniques. Moreover, the use of human gesture also introduces interesting sonic effects. It is impossible for a human to “exactly” produce finger triggers 100ms apart. Generating a “periodic” function by rhythmically triggering one’s fingers produces slight variations and in fact, adds a pleasant degree of organic interest to the generated sound. I hope to incorporate my left hand and use finger position to introduce micro-tonal variations to the generated sound.

The code is still far from perfect. For example, there are still false triggers when moving the hand too quickly. Moreover, quickly moving the hand also counts as “quickly moving a finger” and causes all samples to be triggered. These bugs will be removed in future versions.